Heartbeat
by RiapsedEndOf
Summary: Konoha wonders about feelings, hearts, and whether he even has one. Surely he does. Right? One-shot, Konoha's POV.


_Heartbeat._

Sensei gave me tests a lot. It was every night when I first woke up and started living with him, but after awhile it became a periodical thing, something every so often; once or twice a week, maybe. The poking and prodding felt familiar to me from the first night he started. The pricking to test blood, the rare shot. Somehow it felt normal to me already. Every time it happened, I would watch him do his work. I tended to observe. I didn't talk much, and there were a lot of things in this world that still confused me. Even though Sensei had hinted I'd lived longer than I could remember, I couldn't remember that time or even begin to figure out what had happened, so I was left with a feeling of being lost and confused.

Empty.

That's what I was, and sometimes the feeling would affect me more than other times, but it would fill me – which I guess is kind of contradicting itself – and overwhelm me with blank loneliness. I never really did anything about it. It just happened, and I figured it must be normal.

I watched other people's faces. I watched Sensei's face when he smiled at me or laughed; when he downturned his mouth in a frown or looked lost like I felt. A lot of the time he just looked tired. I watched the faces of all the kids I played baseball with outside. They would smile far wider then Sensei; they'd laugh and their eyes would hold this brightness in them that I didn't understand. They all seemed to enjoy being around me, and I thought I enjoyed being with them too, but my face wouldn't change when I went to them like theirs did. Everyone's faces changed a lot. I was doing my very best to understand…

Sensei said people changed their faces with different feelings. He said feelings came from the head, but people felt them in the chest. Sometimes he mentioned something being wrong in my head, and so far I'd felt absolutely nothing in my chest, like there was nothing in there.

So it all goes back to those tests. I would pay attention and watch him as, no matter how much the various things would change, he would take out something he called a stethoscope and put the metal circle on my chest while he put the listeners in his ears.

Once, I asked him what he was listening for.

Sensei looked up at me through his glasses with his dark grey eyes – pretty much black – and blinked. "Eh?" he asked, tone loose as always. He adjusted his glasses and straightened up. I was already sitting up as straight as I could go. "Well, I'm partially listening to your breathing," he said. "You know, in your lungs. If something sounds wrong, then I need to worry about you. Get it?"

I nodded.

He rubbed the back of his head. "I guess you could say I'm also listening to your 'heart'…"

I blinked, something occurring to me. "My heart?" Heart, that was it; Sensei had mentioned feelings being felt where the heart is; that must be it.

"Yeah, your heart. It's supposed to pump blood through the body in some kinda rhythm. Like…" He made his lips thinner, then handed me the stethoscope. "Here, put these on." I took the listeners, blinking, then put them in my ears as he pressed the circle to his shirt. "Do you hear a thumping sound?"

I listened closely. There it was; a soft _th-thump, th-thump, th-thump_. He lifted the circle from his shirt and there was a scratching sound before he said, "And that's a heartbeat." And he left it at that.

If it was this 'heart' that felt so hollow and cool, what did that mean? Could I not feel? I asked him if I couldn't, but he just laughed and said, "Of course you can feel!" He looked me in the eye. "And you know how I know that?"

I just tilted my head.

"Well, I've known you for awhile, first of all," he said, holding up one finger. "And you show you care in a lot of ways; you help me out a lot and you care about the well-being of others. You like kids. I mean, come on, you've gotta have something in there." He punched me in the arm and laughed a little bit.

I didn't know what to do, so I punched him in the arm too. He fell over.

I was never punched in the arm by Sensei again.

But now, knowing that I was feeling these things, how could I feel it and not know it? Were these the feelings that made people's faces change? It wasn't making my face change. I didn't feel much different.

So while Sensei was at work teaching, I went and found his stethoscope. I put the listener plugs in my ears, and then I pressed the circle to my chest. I waited, and listened. I listened to sounds that I decided must be the sound of my breathing. I stopped breathing just to hear my heart, and instead of hearing a soft, repetitive _th-thump_ ing, I heard a gentle whirring. A constant, pulsing thrum. There was some kind of rhythmic pulse, but there was no 'heartbeat.'

I didn't know what to think. Was something wrong? I took the circle off of my chest and slipped it into my shirt, pressing it to my skin in case maybe my clothes were muffling the sound. The result was the same. Was I sick? Or did I just sound different? Did I have no heartbeat?

Did I have no heart?

For someone who doesn't get a lot of things, I could at least tell whether I liked something or not, and I did not like that idea. The thought brought that hollow not-feeling again, and I gazed emptily at the shelf in front of me before absently setting the stethoscope back in its box.

I struggled to understand my situation. I knew that when someone died, their heart stopped beating… I blinked. What if I had died last night, and I was just doing death wrong? Oh no…

At this theory, I headed into the living room and promptly lay down on the blanketed ground where I slept every night, staring at the ceiling. That was how Sensei found me when he got home from work, and he seemed confused as to why I was lying down.

"Tired?" he asked me.

"I have no heartbeat. I'm dead. I'm sorry." I really just figured I didn't know how to be dead, just like I didn't know how to do a lot of things.

"Eh?" I heard his footsteps come closer, thudding softly on the ground. Out of the side of my sight I saw Sensei crouch down beside me. "You have a heartbeat; I hear it whenever I check you."

"But it doesn't sound like yours. Maybe I died last night…," I spoke softly, voice distant. It tended to be, Sensei said I did that a lot.

Sensei laughed at that. I didn't get what was funny. But I never got what was funny, so that was pretty normal. "You're not dead, Konoha," said Sensei. "If you were dead, you wouldn't be talking to me right now, alright? Trust me." Why would he lie? "You won't be dying any time soon, don't worry about it."

I looked at him. "…Oh." I sat up.

"A part of the reason I know you won't be dying anytime soon is partially because of that unique heartbeat of yours. That ability you have isn't one that other people have got. It's almost impossible for you to die, alright?"

I blinked at him. I thought I was glad for that. "…So…" I asked quietly, to make sure, "…I can still play baseball with the others, right?"

Sensei looked at me for a second, blinking, then smiled. "Of course."

I looked down. "I am glad…"

It was quiet for a few beats, then I felt Sensei's hand on my head. He said, "You know, you really were a good kid."

I thanked him.

I didn't really think about the fact he said 'were' until a few hours later.

* * *

 **Golly, I do so love Konoha.**

 **Reviews are highly appreciated; they give me a smiling face~ uvu I hope you enjoyed.**


End file.
